How Twitter is putting an end to our private lives | Technology | The Observer

Standard

I love these hand-wringing articles in the old media about how the new media is ruining our lives. Here’s one from the Guardian about things happening in public which used to be private. Follow the link below to read the full article.

One of the most unnerving sentences I read last week was a brief question posed by someone I didn’t know, about someone I didn’t know: although by the time I read it, I was au fait with a conversation that they might – or might not – have had. But I certainly wasn’t well enough acquainted with Melissa Stetten to be able to judge the tone of this tweet: “Did I just ruin Brian Presley’s life via Twitter?”

Stetten is a 22-year-old model who, on 6 June, took a flight from Los Angeles to New York and found herself sitting next to an actor called Brian Presley. This much, we think, is undisputed; what followed is not. In a series of tweets, Stetten appears to convey their conversation, which fulfils two cliches: that of person bored half to death by self-regarding neighbour who fails to pick up on their “I’m going to read my book now” cues; and that of attractive woman hit on by man emboldened by a hiatus in matrimonial or familial obligations.